Sterling won a hotly-debated penalty and David Silva appeared offside before City scored their third goal.

'I think they are a good side but they are not an unstoppable side,' Wenger told beIN Sports. 'The referee had an absolutely atrocious input into the result of the game.

'We conceded a penalty that was not a penalty and an offside goal that was an offside goal. [Sterling] used the naivety of the referee in a very positive way.

'That's why I said the referees don't work, they don't do their homework. I said he used the fact he was in front of our defender to dive and he dived. In a few years he'll say that as well. In the heat of the moment he'll deny it.'

Wenger also suggested the clash at the Etihad Stadium was far closer than the end result, citing 'expected goals' statistics.

He added: 'If you look at the expected goals, it was 0.7 for them and 0.6 for us, it was a very tight game, they created very little, had very little number of shots on target, one more than us, that's all.'

Numbers provided by Opta revealed, however, that Arsenal's expected goals stood at 0.31, while City's was 1.83.

Wenger has branded Oliver naive and described his performance as 'absolutely atrocious'

Sergio Aguero slotted home the penalty after Sterling was fouled, one of three City goals